"Skirting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rolling to and fro on the long, regular swell, impatiently waiting until Sunday should be over and she could work cargo. Round us on all the other sides were wooded hills and valleys, and away in the distance to the west showed the white town and castle of Elmina and the nine-mile road thither, skirting the surf-bound seashore, only broken on its level way by the mouth of the Sweet River. Over all was the brooding silence of the noonday heat, broken only by the dulled thunder of ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... in the happy days, had so often walked to reach our favorite haunt the gulf. The path was wider and more worn now—almost a thoroughfare, in fact. It came to the creek at the very head of the chasm, skirting the mysterious circle of sacred stones, then crossing the swift water on a new bridge of logs, then climbing the farther side of the ravine by a steep zigzag course which hung dangerously close to the precipitous wall of dark rocks. I remarked at the time, as we made our ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... from their breastworks, kept up a continual fire of cannon and small arms upon this poor solitary and maimed gentleman. In this uncomfortable situation he stood, when he discerned at a distance a Highland officer, with a party of his men, skirting the plain towards the field of battle. He forthwith waved his hand in signal of distress, and being perceived by the officer, he detached three of his men to his assistance. These brave fellows hastened to him through the midst of a ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... upon the premises of an extensive Benedictine monastery, from which they were only separated by a narrow lane, that led from the town to the river. At the very angle of this lane, where it opened by a small water-gate upon a narrow towing-path, skirting alike the town-walls and the banks of the stream, there stood a low building attached to the monastery, the upper story of which thus overlooked the old gardens of the palace on the one hand, and, on the other, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... the landscape swept like an emerald sea, over which the small shadows rippled in passing waves, beginning at the rail fence skirting the red clay road and breaking at last upon the darker green of the far-off pines. Here and there a tall pink blossom rose like a fantastic sail from the deep and rocked slowly to and fro in the summer wind. When at last ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... over the rough stones, skirting the great cliffs, falling into small craters, crawling out again, just missing several times being precipitated into yawning caverns, and stumbling over petrified bodies that ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... up the wooden steps to the door of the Red Dog. The marshal's eyes followed him solicitously until he disappeared within; then he slipped back into the alleyway, skirting the side of the building, until he reached a window near ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... kept out of sight even on the bare ridges. Arcoll could have taught them nothing in the art of scouting. At an incredible pace they hurried me along, now in a meadow by a stream side, now through a patch of forest, and now skirting a ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... some of the party skirting the swamp in one direction and some in another. It was difficult work and they did not wonder that Merrick and his party had given up in disgust. Occasionally they had to wade in water up to their ankles and then climb through brushwood that was all ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... dawn of history, men have swarmed to found new homes in distant lands. The Tyrians, skirting Northern Africa, stopped at Carthage; Carthaginians dotted Spain and even the distant coasts of Britain and Ireland; Greeks gemmed Italy and Sicily with art-loving settlements; Rome carried multitudinous colonies with her conquering ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... a lake which gave a chilly air to the landscape in the winter day, then past a strip of country meagrely wooded. We turned into a narrow road that struck the hills at once, skirting a sloping place covered with scrub and quite dark, like a black patch on the landscape. After that it was a barren pasture, prolific only in bleached boulders of rocks, of bracken that lay wasted, of broom that was sere. It was a very still afternoon, not a breath of wind stirring. ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... on apace? The ticking of the death-watch would replace The baby's prattle, for the over-wise; The breeze's murmur would become the cries Of stormy petrels where the breakers race. We live as moves the walker in his sleep, Who walks because he sees not the abyss His feet are skirting as he goes his way: If we could see the morrow from the steep Of our security, the soul would miss Its footing, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... had had to admit to himself that while he had kept steady watch of the line of hills skirting his mental horizon, up to the present moment no young gentleman in a dilapidated suit of clothes, inverted waist measure, and lean legs had shown himself above the sky line. On the contrary, if all reports were true—and Alec omitted no opportunity to ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... remark was unquestionably true, for the road—if a mere footpath merits the name—was rugged in the extreme—here winding round the base of steep cliffs, there traversing portions of luxuriant forest, elsewhere skirting the ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... to have taken its name from a capital city called Chala, which lay on the great route connecting Babylon with the southern Ecbatana, and in later times was known as Holwan. Below Apolloniatis, and (like that district) skirting the Tigris, was Sittacene, (so named from its capital, Sittace which is commonly reckoned to Assyria, but seems more properly regarded as Susianian territory.) Such are the chief divisions of ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... walked along the roads skirting the wall of the park. Now, indeed, was his life's critical moment. How long must elapse before he could know the contents of Lady Ogram's will? In a very short time he would have need of money; he had been disbursing ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... for any communication between himself and his cousin until they had left for the upper realms, where, surrounded only by silence, they could converse while the busy motor hummed and the aeroplane headed as they willed, either high above the hills, or skirting the tops ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... way up the path between the bushes: and she followed my stride almost at a run. On the bare mountain-spur above the high-road she overtook and fell into pace with me: and so, skirting Nonza, we breasted the long slope ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... They went on, skirting the pool in which Kendric saw the stars mirrored. Now and then there was a splash; he made out a tortoise scrambling into the water; he caught the glint of a fish. They disturbed birds that flew from their hidden places in the trees; a little rabbit, like a tiny ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... drops forgivingly And sadly, breaking not the general hush; The maple-swamps glow like a sunset sea, Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush; All round the wood's edge creeps the skirting blaze 75 Of bushes low, as when, on cloudy days, Ere the rain falls, the cautious farmer ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... skirting a wall of the fifteenth century, surmounted by a pointed gable, with bricks set in contrast, he found himself before a large door of arched stone, with a rectilinear impost, in the sombre style of Louis XIV., flanked by two flat medallions. A severe facade rose ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Norway has splendid roads. No difficulty in road-making seems to be too great for the Norwegian engineers to overcome. One frequently sees miles of road cut out of the solid rock of some mountain-side, and skirting the edge of a fjord or long lake. Again, a road may wind its way through a narrow gorge, with precipices a thousand feet high on either hand, and down in the depths a wild torrent, crossed every here and there by massive stone bridges; or, over the open mountains a road will zigzag upwards to a ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... century. Miss Letty once lent him The Lady of the Lake; but before he had read the first canto through, his grandmother laid her hands upon it, and, without saying a word, dropped it behind a loose skirting-board in the pantry, where the mice soon made it a ruin sad to behold. For Miss Letty, having heard from the woful Robert of its strange disappearance, and guessing its cause, applied to Mrs. Falconer for the volume; ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... greater part of the drive, flowed through a valley, which it divided into two very unequal portions, skirting occasionally with its left bank the woods that ran quite down the sides of the hills to the water, and then winding away to the right, leaving considerable intervals of level land betwixt itself and the woods above mentioned, but, almost invariably, having still wider expanses ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... lone, sequester'd nook, Where skirting woods imbrown the dimpling brook, The ruin'd convent lies: here wont to dwell The lazy canon midst his cloister'd cell, While Papal darkness brooded o'er the land, Ere Reformation made her glorious stand: Still oft at eve belated ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... winding through forest and desert, up hill and down, skirting sheer precipices and creeping through tunnels. And at the end of the trail one stumbles upon the tiny, hidden village where the last handful of a once powerful nation has sought refuge. Half-clad, half-fed, half-wild, one might say, they hide away there in their ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... buffalo; a land of palaces and pagodas and gilded temples; of sun-bronzed pioneers and priests in yellow robes and bejeweled dancing girls. Lured by the tales I had heard of curious places and strange peoples to be seen in the interior of the peninsula, I refused to content myself with skirting its edges on a steamer. Instead, I determined to cross it ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... Old Peter seemed still more puzzled, and looked up and down the road with an air of the most amusing perplexity, before he made up his mind to follow his mistress. About a hundred yards from this spot, the lane turned abruptly to the left, skirting a second side of the square field in which I had taken up my position; by crossing this field, therefore, I conceived I should cut off a great angle, and regain the road before they ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... Channel" mentioned in the Russo-British treaty was not the channel now known by that name, but rather Behm Channel, next west, or Clarence Straits; and, secondly, that the ten-league limit should be measured from the outer rim of the archipelago skirting Alaska, and not from the mainland coast. If conceded, these claims would add to the Canadian Dominion about 29,000 square miles, including 100 miles of sea-coast, with harbors like Lynn Channel and Tahko Inlet, several islands, vast ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... skirting the side of the hill, with a dip of green meadow-land below them, rising on the other side into coppices. The twang of the horn, and the babbling cry of the hounds, reminded Albinia that the hunting season had begun, ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were now in great force, in front of them; they turned to the southwest, several messengers being sent off to appoint a fresh meeting place with Coligny; and skirting the hills of Bourbonais, Auvergne, and Limousin, they at last arrived within a day's march of Limoges; the journey of five hundred miles, through a hostile country, being one of the most ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... the lazy sons of Skirting Ishmael is prowling out of his camp to-night," said the young bee-hunter, with great vivacity, and in tones that might easily have been excited to a menace, "he may have an end put to his journey sooner than either he or his ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... which is as beautiful as a picture. A scarred and wrinkled precipice rises to a height of eighteen hundred feet; on a tiny bench half way up its vast wall, sits a little snowflake of a church, no bigger than a martin-box, apparently; skirting the base of the cliff are a hundred orange groves and gardens, flecked with glimpses of the white dwellings that are buried in them; in front, three or four gondolas lie idle upon the water—and in the burnished mirror of the lake, mountain, chapel, houses, groves and boats are counterfeited ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... pilgrim to the Pindari glacier leaves the cart-road and follows a bridle-path which, having crossed the Gola by a suspension bridge, mounts the steep hill on the left bank. Skirting this hill on its upward course, the road reaches the far side, which slopes down to the Barakheri stream. A fairly steep ascent of 5 miles through well-wooded country brings the traveller to Bhim Tal, a lake 4500 feet above the level of the sea. This lake, of which ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... been sent for blue-berries through the Eagle Rock woods to the high upland pasture where the Powers cows fed during the day. On the upper edge of that, skirting a tract of slash left from an old cutting, was a berry-patch, familiar to all the ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... eleven miles in a S. W. and S. S. W. direction, skirting the scrub. During the journey, two thunder-storms passed over; one to the southward beyond the Condamine, the other to the north and north-east over the mountains. The scrub is a dense mass of vegetation, with a well defined outline—a dark body of foliage, without ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... Even after sunset the atmosphere was oppressive, and pavements and railings in the city were warm to the touch from the steady blaze to which they had been subjected. At the Holbrook farm, however, occasional puffs of air stirred the silver poplars skirting the road, and waved the brown timothy grass that grew ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... roads met. The track curved about five hundred feet beyond the location of the stop where Judith had promised to meet the car with the suppers. There was a short cut from the rear of the house and Judith always took short cuts. Through the orchard, down the hill, across a stream, up the hill, skirting a blackberry thicket, through a grove of beeches, dark and peaceful with lengthening shadows falling on mossy banks, went the girl. She stopped a moment in the grove and looked out across the fertile country—everywhere ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... their fingers and peeping out, the boys saw that the boat was not making out into the deeper part of the lake, but was skirting the edge, keeping only a few yards out from the band ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... certain nervousness, Phil hurried out around the dressing tent, and skirting the two big tents, sought out Mr. ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... your way out of the crowded roadstead of Singapore, and skirting the red cliffs of Tanah Merah, slip round the heel of the Peninsula, you turn your back for a space on the seas in which ships jostle one another, and betake yourself to a corner of the globe where the world is very old, and where conditions of life have seen but little change during ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... pepper plant or vine requires a good soil, the richer the better, but the red soil of the higher hills is not congenial, the Chinese think, to it. The undulations skirting the bases of the hills, and the deep alluvial lands, where not saturated with water, or liable to be overflowed, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... entering, after all that we had seen, into the palace grounds, and skirting along Linlithgow Loch, which would be very beautiful if its banks were made shadowy with trees, instead of being almost bare. We viewed the palace on the outside, too, and saw what had once been the principal entrance, but now looked like an arched window, pretty ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Skirting the two plantations, with others in the same line of settlements, was a cypress swamp. It extended along the edge of the great river, covering an area of many square miles. Besides being a swamp, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... He limped along, skirting the lower spurs of the Shoshones, and soon came on that horrid smell that he had known for years, but never followed up or understood. It was right in his road, and he traced it to a small, barren ravine that was strewn over with skeletons and dark objects, and Wahb, as he passed, ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... the stone gallery skirting the quadrangle. Their hobnailed soles and steel plated heels ring on the stone flags. The ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... (Vol. ii., p. 237.).—Your correspondent S.H., in noticing the old track "skirting the base of the chalk hills," and known by the name of the "Pilgrims' Road," has omitted to state that its commencement is at Oxford,—a fact of importance, inasmuch as that the Archbishops of Canterbury had there a handsome palace (the ruins of which still ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 47, Saturday, September 21, 1850 • Various
... yards Harvard fumbled, not for the first time that day, and Neil, more by accident than design, got the pigskin on the bounce, and, skirting the opposing right end, went up the field for a touch down without ever being in danger. The Erskine supporters went mad with delight, and the Harvard stand was ruefully silent. Devoe missed a difficult goal and a few minutes later the game ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... two she walked on, her path skirting the wet sea-weed which showed that there had been heavy weather outside the bay. The brown streamers had blue lights on them like the sea and the sand was firm and hard. A thick froth churned up from the deeps ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... brought them 'daily bread' and little more—mangling-women, washer-women, cobblers, tailors, chandlers, driving their trades in parlours and kitchens and back room and garrets, and sometimes all of them under the same roof—brick-fields skirting gardens paled with staves of old casks, or timber pillaged from houses burnt down, and blackened and blistered by the flames—mounds of dock-weed, nettles, coarse grass and oyster-shells, heaped in rank confusion—small dissenting chapels to teach, with no lack of illustration, the ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... skirting along the foot of rough, broken hills clothed with a scanty vegetation. Juan nodded approvingly and at once suggested ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... was cold comfort, counting the wounds, and she longed for sympathy. Glancing through her leafy screen she saw Richard skirting the orchard fence on his way to the barn. She turned to scramble down and in the descent struck her elbow on the bark, the poor elbow already tender from a vicious sting. Sarah cried out in pain, let go hastily and ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... Van Sant, who was leading, suddenly stopped short and lifted his hand in warning. Before, in a bend of the stream that we were skirting, among the pines and spruces beside it was a lean-to, with a blackened fire, and two figures rolled in blankets; and back from the stream a little way, across in an open grassy spot, was a burro. ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... a broad belt of woodland, skirting the eastern side of a wide, fertile river-bottom, and giving to the settlement the popular ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... was no place for Sam, so I take my hoe and I run away as fast as I could. No one try to stop me. De oder niggers dance and sing when dey saw de oberseer fall dead. I ran all dat day up among de hills, skirting round de different plantations till I get quite into de wild part. Wheneber I came to stream I walk a long way in him till I get to tree hanging ober. Den pull myself up into de branches, climb along and drop at de farthest end, and den run again, for I knew ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... little hoofs, Gypsy and Fanny rapidly whirled the carriage through the drowsy town, across the Pilgrim Brook, and so, by the pretty suburb of "T'other Side," (which no child of the Mayflower shall ever consent to call Wellingsley,) to the open road skirting the blue waters ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... recognized that every hour was precious. Accordingly he walked immediately back to the spot at which he had left the car and, following the porter's directions, drove over the line at the level crossing immediately beyond the station, and proceeded up a tree-lined road until he found himself skirting the railing of an extensive tract of ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... "We're skirting the edge of the desert," said the doctor, using his glass. "Yes, as far as I can see it is all tableland that way; the grass soon ends, and all is dusty sand with the air quivering over it as it sweeps away ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... end of the village the road took a sharp twist, skirting a bit of rising ground. There was just a glimmer of a warning light which streamed athwart the turning ribbon of laden ants. And as Doggie wheeled through the dim ray he heard a voice that ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... despairing determination as he walked. He searched every street and alley; he interviewed the Bekjees, who stamp along the streets, pounding the pavement with their iron-shod clubs; he tramped out to the Taksim, and down again to Galata tower, plunging into the dark alleys about the Oriental Bank, skirting lower Pera to the Austrian embassy, and climbing up the narrow path between tall houses, till he was once more in the Grande Rue; crossing to the filthy quarters of Kassim Pascha and emerging at the German Lutheran church, crossing, recrossing, stumbling ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... drove across the valley and, skirting the old town on the hill, entered, by one of the twenty gates of Moulay-Ismael, a long empty street lined with half-ruined arcades. Beyond was another street of beaten red earth bordered by high red walls blotched with gray and mauve. Ahead of us this road stretched ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... the edge of the woods he could see the regimental colours and the bulk of his regiment re-forming; and he spurred forward to join them, skirting the edge of a tangle of infantry, dragoons, and lancers who were having a limited but bloody affair of their own in a cornfield where a flag tossed wildly—a very beautiful, square red flag, its folds emblazoned with a blue cross set ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... Willard came up from the harbour and took Miss Sally down to see Eden. Eden was a tiny, cornery, gabled grey house just across the road and down a long, twisted windy lane, skirting the edge of a beech wood. Nobody had lived in it for four years, and it ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Skirting the Greenland coast amid the ice, the vessels encountered heavy weather, and at length anchored in Godhaven Harbour, in the Isle of Disco. Here supplies and sledge dogs were embarked, and on the 15th of July the ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... upon this pretty sequestered spot, we descended to the bed of the stream, and found a railroad already skirting its course. ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... Skirting a line of low savage hills that ruggedly stretched from north to south, a gleaming line of metal threaded its way. A train, southbound for Mecca, had halted on the famous Pilgrims' Railway. From its windows and doors, white-clad ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... way home, through the park, along a path skirting the top of a wooded ravine, a dashing rivulet making a pleasant murmur among the rocks below, and glancing here and there through the brushwood that clothed the precipitous banks, when, with a sudden ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... set his foot on the top rung of the ladder. He could not, therefore, be very far away, the more so as he had taken the precaution to remove the ladder, in order to prevent the inmates of the house from using it. And soon she saw him skirting the remains of the old cloister. She put the gun to her shoulder, calmly took aim ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... again, as if gifted with perpetual youth—not an evening passing without her presence, sooner or later, on the scene—and appeared, too, to have more dignity of position and greater size than in the frigid north, ascending right up to the very zenith, instead of merely skirting the heavens, as she sometimes does here, and shining down from thence like a midnight sun in radiant splendour. The Scorpion, also, amongst the various constellations, was similarly promoted, occupying a place nearer ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... road, with its villanous paving of cobbles and coal dust, its mills to the right, down below in the hollow, skirting the course of the river, and its rows of workmen's homes to the left, climbing the hill—in a tremor of excitement. Six years! Would anyone recognize him? Ah! there was Jerry's 'public,' an evil-looking weather-stained hole; but another ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... car-window I caught sight of a distant down on which, the substratum of chalk showing through the turf skilfully cut away, appeared the figure of a gigantic white horse, the memorial of an old Saxon battle; thence passing near Glastonbury and skirting the haunts of ancient Druids in the Mendip Hills, I was attuned for a meeting with a scholar who more than any other man of the time had aroused interest in the old life of England. I alighted at Wells where a trap was waiting, ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... opened the gate and passed in. He walked along the avenue, from which the lawn was still hidden by the skirting hedge, went up the steps, and ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... evening I went on board the shallop of Richard Faulder, of Allanbay; and, committing ourselves to the waters, we allowed a gentle wind from the east to waft us at its pleasure toward the Scottish coast. We passed the sharp promontory of Siddick; and skirting the land within a stone-cast, glided along the shore till we came within sight of the ruined Abbey of Sweetheart. The green mountain of Criffell ascended beside us; and the bleat of the flocks from its summit, together with ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... good as, if not better than, that at Newmarket—there is to-day a track of two thousand metres, or a mile and a quarter—the distance generally adopted in France—with good turns, excepting the one known as the "Reservoirs," which is rather awkward, and which has the additional disadvantage of skirting the road to the training-stables—a temptation to bolt that is sometimes too strong for horses of a doubtful character. For this reason there is sometimes a little confusion in the field at this point. Before coming to the last turn there is a descent, followed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... Winterton, pulling up his bridle and walking his horse as they were skirting the moor of Irvine, leaving the town about a mile off on the right, "you and me, Gilhaize, that are but servants, need nae fash our heads wi' sic things. The wyte o' wars lie at the doors of kings, and the soldiers are free o' the sin o' them. But how will ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... the schooner captain shook his head, and, locking his arm round a ratlin, gave his body to the gentle roll of the craft as she stole along, skirting the sunset, splendid, and to the nautical eye ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... of the place was so charming and delightful to Clive:—the beautiful sea stretched before his eyes when waking, Capri a fairy island in the distance, in the amethyst rocks of which Sirens might be playing—that fair line of cities skirting the shore glittering white along the purple water—over the whole brilliant scene Vesuvius rising with cloudlets playing round its summit, and the country bursting out into that glorious vegetation with which sumptuous ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... deg. 59' south and 138 deg. 42' east. No land was visible so far to the north as where the trees appeared above the horizon, which showed the coast to be very low, and our soundings were fast decreasing. From noon to six o'clock we ran thirty miles to the northward, skirting a sandy shore at the distance of five, and thence to eight miles; the depth was then 5 fathoms, and we dropped the anchor upon a bottom of sand, mixed with pieces ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... burst upon his sight, skirting either side of the track, and casting soft deep shadows on the bright green sward beneath the branches. The trees were of noble growth, and from every limb hung pendant the tattered sheets of long gray moss, so common in the South, and so solemn ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... was broken off suddenly by a glimpse of an old deformed man bearing a burden on his shoulders, followed by a slender figure, jealously wrapped in a plebeian mantle that left only a hem of silver tissue under its border. They were skirting along the brow of the hill opposite, away from the rest of the pilgrims on the road. Both were walking slowly and the old man seemed to be examining the farther slope, as if meditating a halt. Julian ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... danger zone in the piping times of peace, were now disappearing under the blows of the official demolition. The trees on the outer avenues were being felled in order to enlarge the horizon. Barricades of sacks of earth and tree trunks were heaped at the doors of the old walls. The curious were skirting the suburbs in order to gaze at the recently dug trenches and the barbed wire fences. The Bois de Boulogne was filled with herds of cattle. Near heaps of dry alfalfa steers and sheep were grouped in the ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... this occasion, and skirting round it along a laboriously chipped-out ledge about a foot wide, the boy entered a crack in the rock face, for it could hardly be called a cavern. But it was big enough for its purpose, which was to shelter from ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... carefully, Peggy pulled a long bulrush from a clump that grew at the side of the bog. Then she walked along the edge, skirting with care the deceitful green that looked so fair and lovely, till she came to where a slender birch hung its long drooping branches out over the bog. Clinging to one of these branches, Peggy leaned forward as far as she dared, and began to angle for her hat. "He rises ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... of gumption, too," observed the judge, and considered his housekeeper grimly. "When all's said," he added, "I micht have done waur - I micht have been marriet upon a skirting ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... entered upon a grand scene, which exhibited the commencement of the wine-producing district. The road was scarped from the mountain side several hundred feet above the river, which murmured over its rocky bed in the bottom of the gorge. We were skirting a deep valley, and upon either side the mountains rose to a height of about 1400 feet, completely covered with vineyards from the base to the summit; this long vale or chasm extended to the Troodos range, which ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... morning the distant waning clouds, like those that gather round the mountain-tops, took the form of cliffs and hills skirting the horizon. The cry of "land" was on the tip of every tongue. But Columbus by his reckoning knew that they must still be far from any land, but fearing to discourage his men he kept his thoughts to himself, for he found no trustworthy ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... on three sides by steep cliffs, and rises or falls periodically with the floods. A broad canal, which takes its origin in the direction of Hit at the beginning of the alluvial plain, bears with it the overflow, and, skirting the lowest terraces of the Arabian chain, runs almost parallel to the Euphrates. In proportion as the canal proceeds southward the ground sinks still lower, and becomes saturated with the overflowing waters, until, the banks gradually ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... these frightful defiles and chasms, the roads twist and turn, in a zigzag and constantly ascending course, creeping along the most frightful precipices, sometimes beneath them and sometimes on the brink, penetrating the darkest and gloomiest defiles, skirting the most impetuous and foaming torrents, and at last, perhaps, emerging upon the surface of a glacier, to be lost in interminable fields of ice and snow, where countless brooks run in glassy channels, and crevasses yawn, ready to take advantage of any slip which may enable ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... summer of 1595, the periodical plague of London was thinning out the inhabitants of that dirty city. In the lower part of the city skirting the Thames, the sewerage was very bad and but the poorest sanitary rules existed. After a hard rain, the lanes, alleys and streets ran with a stream of putrefaction, as the offal from many tenement houses was thrown in the public highway, where the rays from ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... together, he found himself for half an hour conjoined with Mrs. St. George. Her husband had taken the advance with Miss Fancourt, and this pair were quite out of sight. It was the prettiest of rambles for a summer afternoon—a grassy circuit, of immense extent, skirting the limit of the park within. The park was completely surrounded by its old mottled but perfect red wall, which, all the way on their left, constituted in itself an object of interest. Mrs. St. George mentioned to him the surprising number of acres ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... by the neighborhood of the mountains, whose granite peered out of the ground like tops of an old oak. We were skirting the enormous base of the mighty volcano. My uncle never took his eyes from off it; he could not keep from gesticulating, and looking at it with a kind of sullen defiance as much as to say "That is the giant I have made up my mind ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... the man acquitted himself to admiration in the management of his lazy cattle. Crack went the whip, and away floundered the heavy vehicle through the deep ruts of the ill-kept road, or rather lane, (for it was little better,) which, then, led across Southampton Fields. Skirting the noble gardens of Montague House, (now, we need scarcely say, the British Museum,) the party speedily reached Great Russell Street,—a quarter described by Strype, in his edition of old Stow's famous Survey, "as being graced with the best buildings in all Bloomsbury, and ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... morning sun. The woman walks out and on, lithe grace in every movement. Then the valley swims before him—for it is, it is, the woman he had loved. He knows the dainty step, the erect carriage, the shapely frame. Nearer still she comes, skirting the base of the hill he had climbed, still often looking towards the sun, pausing now and then to pluck a flower by the way. ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... two of his men to join the new escort of the prisoners, and presently the small party, skirting the walls of the Palais de Justice, began to walk rapidly away from the ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... leading to the anteroom on their left, and thus skirting the ballroom without entering it, brings them to the foot of ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... covering; rivers tumble over his aged chin; and his rough beard is stiff with ice. Here the Cyllenian, poised evenly on his wings, made a first stay; hence he shot himself sheer to the water. Like a bird that flies low, skirting the sea about the craggy shores of its fishery, even thus the brood of Cyllene left his mother's father, and flew, cutting the winds between sky and land, along the sandy Libyan shore. So soon as his winged feet reached the settlement, he espies Aeneas founding towers and ordering new dwellings; ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... on the night of the 17th the travelers were so exhausted that they did not heap enough snow on the skirting of the tent, and when Scott woke up on the following morning he found himself in the open. 'At first, as I lifted the flap of my sleeping-bag, I could not think what had happened. I gazed forth on ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... to be watered; cattle and goats returned from the veldt, where they had been grazing in close proximity to the town, as far as possible out of sight; foot-passengers, amongst them many women, scurried along the side-walks closely skirting the houses. Then, when daylight had completely faded, all took shelter, to wait for the really vicious night-gun, which was usually fired between eight and nine with varying regularity, as our enemies, no doubt, wished to torment the inhabitants by not ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... rather steep hump of land, at the other side of which the barn stood. From the stile two paths could be discerned—one rising straight over the meadow in the direction of the barn, and the other skirting it to the left, parallel with ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... galloped to Duff Harbour, where he found Mr Soutar at breakfast, and arranged with him to be at Lossie House at two o'clock. On his way back he called on Mr Morrison, and requested his presence at the same hour. Skirting the back of the House, and riding as straight as he could, he then made for Scaurnose, and appointed his friends to be near the House at noon, so placed as not to attract observation and yet be within hearing of his whistle from door ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... at the moment saw the lady turn very pale as her eyes fell on the direction of the letter. Her companion saw it too, and instantly stepping into the place beside her, took up the reins, and drove rapidly along the main street of the town, past the harbor, to an open road skirting the sea. Here he slackened pace. The lady was leaning back, with her veil down again, and the letter lying open in her lap. Her attitude was almost that of unconsciousness, and he could see that her eyes were closed. Having satisfied himself of this, he hastily ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... fell meekly, as Esther bowed herself before the feet of Ahasuerus.—She had been reading that chapter, for she looked up,—if there was a film of moisture over her eyes there was also the faintest shadow of a distant smile skirting her lips, but not enough to accent the dimples,—and said, in her pretty, still way,—"If it please the king, and if I have found favor in his sight, and the thing seem right before the king, and I be pleasing ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... these directions, the way was now along a road leading down the island. It ran not far from the river bank and through grounds having a border of trees skirting the water's edge. At last the "little big" house was reached. All the members of the family were away for the summer except one daughter who, with a friend from Richmond for company, was in charge of the servants and managing ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... that name was afterwards transferred to a mission forty miles north of this place. The command rested here, July 19th. Resuming the march on the 20th, the sierra (San Onofre), whose base they were skirting, drew so near the sea that it seemed to threaten their advance, but by keeping close to the shore, they held their way, and on the 24th they encamped on a fine stream of water running through a mesa at the foot of a sierra, whence looking across ...
— The March of Portola • Zoeth S. Eldredge
... central range, situated about three miles from the city of La Vega. From the foot of this hill the great plain stretches into the distance, meeting the azure sky on the eastern horizon, and far in the north skirting the brown slopes of the lofty Monte Cristi mountains, the more remote peaks of which are but faintly perceptible in their envelope of blue haze. A rich carpet of dark green overspreads the plain, where lighter spots indicate patches ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... of the Mediterranean and southward into Egypt. Doubtless, this region was one much traversed by tribes of various languages and cultures. Emerging from the Stone Age, we find the civilization ranging from northern Africa and skirting Arabia through Palestine {153} and Assyria down into the valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates. Doubtless, the civilization that existed in this region was more or less closely related in general type, but had derived ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... of desolation at the post that Jan discovered the big problem for himself and John Cummins. In the last days of the second week, he spent much of his time skirting the edge of the barrens in search of caribou, that there might be meat in plenty when the dogs and men returned a little later. One afternoon, he returned early, while the pale sun was still in the sky, laden with the meat of a musk-ox. As he came from ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... their heads just at that moment, for the two guards, who might otherwise have seen him, both dodged behind rocks. When they looked again in the direction of their prisoners they did not know that one of them was apprising the British leader of the fact that a body of the enemy was at that moment skirting his right flank in cover of an old watercourse, so as to ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... where Robert de Bruce fixed his royal standard on the banks of Bannockburn and just now, from Stirling Castle, I have seen by the setting sun the glorious prospect of the windings of Forth through the rich carse of Stirling, and skirting the equally rich carse of Falkirk. The crops are very strong, but so very late that there is no harvest except a ridge or two perhaps in ten miles, all the way I have ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns |
